Yeah. I am Chicano but identify more with my indigenous side and am friends with plenty of Native Americans. I’ve always personally blamed Judeo-Christian thinking. The whole manifest destiny mindset is insane.
I mean read just a piece of how different things were before those religions came to this land.
A second, related factor was the absence of large domestic animals in North America, which meant that instead of the ‘intensive’, ploughing-and-manuring agriculture practised in Europe, Native American farmers used ‘extensive’ techniques, cultivating an area for a few years and then moving on to let the soil recover. Most groups - hunters and plant-gatherers as well as agriculturists - viewed land as a common resource rather than a commodity that could be owned. Tribes and families had the right to hunt, fish or grow crops in defined places, but the concept of a fenced-off parcel of land being the exclusive property of an individual would have been utterly alien to most, if not all, Native Americans.
The Indian attitude towards land was part of a broader, more fundamental understanding of reality which underpinned the whole of native life. Although, again, there were enormous local variations in mythology and ritual, some of the essentials of this world-view were shared by many, if not most, cultures. Perhaps the most basic element was the belief in sacred power: the idea that everything in the universe was interconnected and possessed a spiritual force or energy that could affect the lives of ‘the people’ and of all other living things. Gaining power and the aid of powerful beings was absolutely vital: for success in hunting, plentiful crops, good health, thriving children and victory in battle. But power was also dangerous.
Source: Chapter 2 of The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson.
Yeah. I am Chicano but identify more with my indigenous side and am friends with plenty of Native Americans. I’ve always personally blamed Judeo-Christian thinking. The whole manifest destiny mindset is insane.
I mean read just a piece of how different things were before those religions came to this land.
Source: Chapter 2 of The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson.